Page - 16 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

16 The body ego mention this once in his self -description. He is too “cool” to notice that he has grown six centimeters over the past summer. How has his interest in girls developed, and how does he discuss this with his friends? I: What’s the situation with looking at girls? S: I look at them completely differently now. First I look at their faces, then how their body is. And then I imagine what they’re like as people; I don’t care whether it’s true. That all goes quickly. Before, I would just look at them, hmm, a girl. I: Do you talk about it with your friends? S: Sure, but how? No idea. “I just think she’s pretty.” Or: “Did you see her, she has a good figure.” I: When you think about who you are, what do you think? S: For instance, I think about my strengths in sports – no idea. Whether you’re an individual competitor or – now I noticed I’m really a team player. I like to be with other people. With friends. I: How is it going with Dad? S: With us, family is intense, the weekends are intense, fishing. Before we did much more together, now I do things with friends on the weekends. I: Are you better at sports than Dad? S: I was never better, it was never a competition. I: Do you sometimes tell him how things go? S: It’s not that I think I’m better. I just like showing him how things go. The point is to go fishing with Dad, not by myself, and he makes it possible. Discussion Sebastian is laconic when he describes his view of girls, without establishing undue contact to his feelings – perhaps he finds this emotional distance important to his observations. Conspicuously, Sebastian emphasizes that he has no rivalry with his father. He only enjoys showing him how something should go. In reality, Sebastian is the best in almost all sports when his family goes windsurfing, kite -flying or fly -fishing with other families. Sebastian baits the lines and fishes so skillfully that many more fish bite his line than the others. Perhaps his numerous experiences of easily taking up sports unfamiliar to him helped develop his self -confidence. He is very independent, good at using public transportation in Vienna, traveling alone to visit a friend or to return home from a sports event. The great importance his friends hold for him becomes only indirectly evident when he mentions that he spends most of his weekends with them. Regret is implied when he speaks of his formerly “intense” family activities. He avoids a precise description of his physical changes: they are like those of any boys undergoing puberty. He finds it hard to put his own sexual excitement into words. Female sexual organs exhibit their maturation through a sustained, ostensibly vis- ible sign – the monthly menstruation – which can become an unconscious aspiration for male adolescents, too. The first menstruation represents a break with childhood,